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Tuesday, January 26, 2016

I lurch awake before sunrise and make coffee,
then wait for early sunlight to make its way through the
south facing kitchen window. Sometimes there is sunlight these mornings, but
mostly there is not. Northern days begin to stretch out languorously
at the beginning of a new year, but we are into February's middling pages
before change can be seen and felt in morning's velvet touch
through the frosted panes of our longing.

In January, I find myself longing for light and chasing it
whenever I I glimpse it for even a moment: village streets at sunrise, my
sleeping garden, sunlight and sparkles dusting trees in the Lanark woods or
glistening like sequins in the snow when the clouds roll back. Like Midas Crook in Ali Shaw's novel, The Girl With Glass Feet, I pursue the light through my frozen highland landscape with notebook
and lens, falling into crevices now and again, blundering into trees
and old stones, occasionally getting stuck in a snowdrift on my snowshoes and flailing (or thrashing) my way free.

There is a fine elusive old truth resting out there in the intangible
interstices between earth and sky, light and shadow. On woodland
rambles, I trace long blue lines of shadow in the snow with my fingers
and measure the difference in their slant from day to day. The
shapes whisper that springtime is already on its way, but this
morning they are also saying that it is going to be a while.

This morning, there is blue sky beyond my windows, and it shades gloriously to pink
and gold and purple near the horizon, but the weather is very cold here (-28 C.), and we have a long long way to go before
springtime puts in an appearance. Until it does turn up, I shall look for dancing motes of light in the woodland and
within myself, and I shall remember that deep within their dreaming roots, all trees hold the light.

I am the opposite from you, I look always for shadow and dark. But I love how you have expressed yourself here, so soulfully and poetically. And its always nice to see a reference to The Girl With Glass Feet - someone gave me that book and I loved it. Your mentioning it reminds me that I loaned it to a friend and never got it back! So obviously someone else loves it too :-)

From the Work

through this life we pass,here for only seventeensyllables, three lines

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Wise Words

These pages, too, are nothing other than talking leaves—their insights stirred by the winds, their vitality reliant on periodic sunlight and on cool dark water seeping up from within the ground. Step into their shade. Listen close. Something other than the human mind is at play here.

David Abram, Becoming Animal

When we deliberately leave the safety of the shore of our lives, we surrender to a mystery beyond our intent.